Misfit American family drifts from place to place, driven on by their need for blood and their desperate search for acting classes.

The Hamiltons is a film that is competing on the wrong turf. A young upstart indie film wandering into Death Ray’s pages and duking it out with the big boys. Well, more fool the Butcher Brothers, the duo behind this very low-budget horror.

The Hamiltons are an ostensibly normal family headed by eldest brother David. Their parents are dead, and this group of five siblings at first seem in need of our sympathy, but they do not deserve it, for they are murderous KILLERS!

There’s some promise in The Hamiltons, some fleeting glimpses of film-making nous on the parts of The Butcher Brothers that may one day flourish. But for the moment this talent is mostly hidden. The film’s dogged by awful acting and a laborious plod towards its transparent final revelation. This is a non-story, a weak take on the vampire myth, and is padded out with clumsy sketches designed to make us love and fear the family.

It’s certainly a labour of love, and those of you that take an interest in the indie film scene will probably find some things in here that please, and indeed in this arena of almost but not quite pro cinema, The Hamiltons has earned itself impressive plaudits. But most of you will just be bored and frustrated, all this for the princely sum of £16 pounds! One for special interest groups only.

Extras: There’s a massive bunch of deleted scenes on here, and a DVD commentary with the Butcher Brothers and Cory Knauf, who plays the moody Francis.

Did you know…?

The Butcher Brothers are neither butchers nor brothers. They are the filmmakers Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores.